1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to technology for enhancing video.
2. Description of the Related Art
The remarkable, often astonishing, physical skills and feats of great athletes draw millions of people every day to follow sports. In particular, the amount of people watching sports on television and the amount of advertising revenue received for televised sports has increased significantly. To satisfy the increased demand for televised sports, broadcasters have deployed a varied repertoire of technologies to highlight to viewers these exciting events. For example, broadcasters have started adding graphical enhancements to the video of the sporting events. Examples of graphic enhancements have included highlighting moving objects, highlighting portions of a playing field, adding virtual advertisements and adding of other graphics to the video of the event.
Many of the systems that add graphic enhancements to video use camera sensors. Examples of a camera sensor include sensors that measure the pan, tilt, zoom, etc. of a camera. In order to use these sensors, some systems must first survey the environment being captured in the video and the location of each camera. By knowing where the object to be highlighted is in the environment, where the camera is in relation to the environment and where the camera is pointing to, the system can determine where to edit the video. While these prior systems have worked very well, the process of surveying the environment and the camera location can be expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, there are instances where it is impossible or impractical to survey the environment being captured in the video. For example, for television coverage of a downhill ski race, it would not be practical to survey an entire mountain at the level of detail necessary for a video enhancement system.
Therefore, a system is needed that avoids the requirement for surveying the environment being captured in the video and the location of each camera.